Marie
Bache of Marie's Soap Company also labels her soap
making business her passion. During a trip to
California seven years ago, she purchased a bar of
handmade soap and fell in love with it. On the verge
of retirement, she spent a year studying making soap
before plunging into a business that has become so
big, it requires four generations to help with the
operation. Marie says, "My mother's my wrapper-she
wraps all the soaps, and my daughter, Brenda, helps
with the clerical work, as well as sales. And my
granddaughter, Brooke, helps, too." She even enlists
her husband to help out.
Like Jamia Daneck, Marie was apprehensive to make
that first batch. She said, "Working with lye is
scary because it's very caustic," but through many
trials and errors, Marie was making enough homemade
soaps and other natural skin care products that she
had to move her operation out of the house and into
her own little soap making shop.
For Bache, making soap began as a hobby. One of her
first bars was to heal her husband's allergies and
eczema. She also made soaps as gifts until she
became so busy, Bache says, "I was in business and I
didn't even know it."
Bache's motto is, "If you can't eat it, don't put it
on your skin," and says, "Anything in my soap you
can eat," though, she recommends working up a good
lather instead. Bache believes you shouldn't need a
lot of creams if you use a good bar of soap, and she
uses all natural ingredients like she and cocoa
butters, vegetable oils, spices and seeds in every
one of her 100% original soap recipes. She also adds
vitamins E and C, in addition to pure essential oils
and botanicals like lavender buds, ground up loofa
and ground up walnut shells. The latter two help
slough off dead skin cells in her new Stripper soap,
"We had a family contest because we had to name the
new soap. Someone said 'Stripper,' which I thought
was a little exotic, but, that is what it does."
While her personal favorite is the Basil Lavender
Soap, a big hit is the Bug Off, which Bache is even
thinking of patenting. Using a cocoa butter base,
the soap is a combination of spruce, pine,
peppermint, lavender and a little citronella that
Bache says horse farmers even rub on their horses'
ears to keep the flies away. She believes, "If it
didn't work, people wouldn't keep coming back for
more.
You will not find Marie's Soap in any retail space,
"We're people persons," she says, choosing to sell
her soaps solely at craft fairs and farmers' markets
from Yardley to Saucon Valley. She can be found
every Tuesday at Rice's Market or on the web.
Bache is doing something she loves while helping
heal skin-and the environment-at the same time,
"We're loving it. It's keeping me young, that's for
sure. I don't have time to get old."
By: Megan McClure June/July 2008
